Return of the Heavenly Sword

Chapter 3. Joy

As if being drawn by the trajectory, I swung my sword along it.

The Black Serpent Gang’s leader's blade, which had felt impossibly fast until just before, moved slowly and grazed my left forearm, while my sword advanced towards his heart, following the trajectory embroidered in the air.

I could clearly see the Black Serpent Gang’s leader's eyes gradually becoming stained with bewilderment and fear.

Crack!

Subsequently, with the sound of my thrust-out sword piercing the Black Serpent Gang’s leader's heart, the slowed world returned to its original flow.

The trajectory that had been embroidered in the air had also vanished at some point.

I searched for the afterimage of that vanished trajectory for a moment.

“I opened my eyes with my effort and will, he said.”

As the words of the Sun Moon Divine Sword came to mind, a faint smile escaped my lips without my realizing it.

Those words felt particularly pleasing. It seemed my nearly forty years had not been in vain.

When I turned my head, I saw the corpses of the Black Serpent Gang members scattered everywhere.

“Hoo. Maybe it's because these are the guys I couldn't kill in my past life, but I feel so refreshed.”

Perhaps because the tension eased along with the relief, fatigue rushed in abruptly.

It wasn't because of the eyes.

With a body that had never once learned martial arts, I had killed twelve men.

By the time I was facing the Black Serpent Gang’s leader, my body had already reached its limit.

Feeling my limbs tremble, I plopped down on the floor and looked up at the sky.

Suddenly, the words the Sun Moon Divine Sword had spoken came to mind.

Did he say to live just like in my past life?

A life of being mad for the sword, a life of beating villains to death. I had no particular aversion to it.

Naturally, the aliases of certain people came to mind.

The aliases of the great evils whom I couldn't even dare to think of killing in my past life.

There were the human butchers called the Three Disasters and the Four Demons, or collectively, the Seven Evils.

The faster ones would make their names known throughout the Central Plains in ten-odd years, the slower ones in twenty-odd years.

Each and every one was a madman who had massacred at least thousands of martial artists and common people.

In my past life, they were monsters I couldn't even dare to look at, but now that I've returned to the past, it seemed there was a good chance.

For this, I had to become stronger faster than those damned human butchers, no matter what it took.

I retraced my memories of the Seven Evils for a moment.

Creeak.

With an unpleasant creak, the gate of the Black Serpent Gang was carefully opened.

I saw the face of the elder peeking in.

“Hiek.”

Perhaps because of the corpses scattered everywhere, the elder shrieked and collapsed to the floor.

The elder, who was scanning the surroundings with a deathly pale face, soon spotted me and hurriedly got up.

“Yuseong. D-did you do all this?”

“Yes, elder.”

Seeing the elder's confused expression, I deliberately added more.

“Actually, I've been secretly training every night.”

The elder soon let out a sigh and said.

“If we leave them like this, corpse poison could develop, so l-let's bury or burn them somewhere for now.”

“You must be busy with the inn, so I'll clean up here.”

“Ahem. It's fine, you rascal. Weren't you concerned about this old man getting his property stolen?”

The elder stubbornly refused my attempts to stop him and gathered the corpses in one place with me.

And the elder, who had brought something to start a fire from the inn, lit a fire where the corpses were gathered.

I stared blankly at the burning corpses of the black faction men for a moment, then turned my head and asked the elder.

“How did you know I was here?”

“I had a bad feeling, so I asked the villagers, and they said they saw you heading this way.”

“...”

The elder was a good person.

Not only did he take me in when I became an orphan around the age of ten and was living as a beggar, but he also hired me as a waiter and consistently paid me a salary.

“You don't have to worry about me, elder.”

“It's fine, you rascal.”

After that, we watched the flames without another word.

For some reason.

The flickering of the flames seemed to overlap with the memories of my past life.

The blood, tears, and screams of the countless common people I had seen and heard while wandering the Jianghu.

I had to get stronger, fast.

I didn't want to see that sight again.

How can I get stronger quickly?

The first thing that came to mind was the secret manual of the Sun Moon Divine Sword.

I had returned to the past thanks to that old Taoist, but I hadn't had a chance to read the manual.

If I could learn the divine art written in that manual, I could become stronger faster. In addition, I might even be able to meet the Sun Moon Divine Sword again.

But, I soon shook my head.

It was impossible right now.

Even though my past self had passed through the grotto and obtained the manual, I didn't know all the traps and mechanisms there.

There were more than one or two traps that others had already triggered, traps where corpses were already scattered.

This body, which reached its limit just by killing twelve countryside thugs, could never pass through that grotto.

It was a place I could only visit after reaching a level at least similar to my past life, or preferably higher.

In that case, what was a way to become stronger than in my past life without the Sun Moon Divine Sword's manual?

As soon as I asked myself that question, what happened just a moment ago came to mind.

The eyes. Yes, I had the eyes.

In that case, how could I use these eyes?

I recalled the moment my eyes had opened.

The life-and-death battle with Jade Cloud Master. And the life-and-death battle with the Black Serpent Gang’s leader.

Realizing they had opened both times on the brink of life and death, I quickly turned my head and looked at the elder.

“Elder. I have a favor to ask.”

The elder, who had been watching the flames, also turned his head to look at me.

“Feel free to speak.”

“Please choke my neck.”

“Neck?”

“Yes. Right up until I'm about to die.”

“...For what reason?”

“I think I might see something when I'm on the brink of death.”

“...”

For some reason.

The elder just stared at me with a strange look, without saying a word.

***

Unfortunately, the elder ultimately did not choke me.

“You seem very tired, so just get some rest for now.”

He left those words and hurriedly departed the Black Serpent Gang's manor.

“What's with him?”

It was just disappointing in many ways.

It was a decision I had made after careful consideration.

I had thought about stabbing myself somewhere to cross the brink of life and death, but there was a huge problem with that.

The problem was that it would take a long time to recover.

Moreover, there was no excellent physician like the Poison Immortal in this area, so there was a risk of dying or becoming a cripple.

But being choked would, at worst, end with me fainting.

As long as the elder wasn't someone hell-bent on killing me.

“It was a rather rational judgment.”

But I couldn't waste time feeling disappointed forever.

I decided to postpone the matter of the eyes for the next opportunity and thought about other methods.

“At the very least, it won't take that long to regain my original skills.”

Because there was a path I had found after experiencing countless trials and errors for thirty-eight years in my past life.

I had wasted a lot of time due to those trials and errors, but this time, since I knew the path, it seemed I could reach it much faster.

I got up and headed for the room the Black Serpent Gang’s leader had used.

Right after collapsing onto the floor with my heavy body, I sat cross-legged and began to regulate my breathing.

“Inhale. Exhale.”

Every time I repeated inhaling and exhaling, air seeped deep into my lungs.

And the energy that came in with that air began to move back and forth along the meridians according to my will.

The name of the inner energy cultivation method I had originally learned was the Jade Cloud Divine Art, which I had learned at that ordinary martial arts academy in my past life.

Perhaps because it was an orthodox cultivation method, it had the advantage of being stable, but since it was a martial art from a countryside academy, it had the disadvantage that the rate at which my inner energy accumulated was extremely slow.

Thus, after mastering the Jade Cloud Divine Art, I gambled with my life as the stake.

I experimented several times by altering the path of the cultivation method, and after overcoming near-death crises from falling into qi deviation a few times, the Poison Immortal, who had looked at me as if I were a cripple, gave me advice as if giving alms.

- You really are something, doing crazy things without ever getting tired of it.

Thus, the cultivation method that was completed by adding the Poison Immortal's advice to the various experiments I conducted with my own body was this very one, the so-called Revolving Cloud Divine Art.

It was far from comparable to the divine arts of the prestigious great sects renowned throughout the Central Plains, but it was still several times superior to the third-rate cultivation method of a countryside martial arts academy.

I guided the energy according to the principles of the Revolving Cloud Divine Art for a long time.

“Inhale. Exhale.”

Right after succeeding in forming a dantian for the first time in this life, I got up with a refreshed feeling.

After cleaning up the corpses and heading out to the now reasonably clean training ground, I drew the sword I had taken from the black faction man.

The sword technique of that martial arts academy I had originally learned was a sword technique called Nine Palace Chain Sword, a basic sword technique with a fancy-sounding name.

A vertical cut from top to bottom. A reverse vertical cut from bottom to top. A horizontal cut from left to right. A horizontal cut from right to left.

A diagonal cut from the upper left to the lower right. A diagonal cut from the upper right to the lower left. And the reverse of those two cuts. And finally, a thrust that pierces the center of the eight trigrams.

It was the Nine Palace Sword because it consisted of a total of nine forms, and it was the Nine Palace Chain Sword with the meaning of freely linking those nine movements.

Once, I couldn't hold it in and even asked the head of that martial arts academy.

- Are there no defensive moves?

The answer that came back was a masterpiece.

- If you execute a cut towards the weapon the enemy swings, that becomes a defensive form.

He was a head instructor who reeked of being a fraud, but his martial arts were real.

That is, they were all martial arts that could certainly build a solid ‘foundation.’ The only problem was that that was all there was to them.

In any case, I patched together the sword techniques I had seen and experienced through real combat and duels onto that solid foundation like a quilt, creating my own diverse sword paths.

If I had been a genius, I would have created a divine art on top of that solid foundation, but I was not a genius.

In any case, I swung my sword while retracing the memories of my past life.

Swish!

The fast yet clean linked strikes were a half-assed imitation of the sword technique of the master who had saved me.

Whoosh.

The sword path that continued by drawing a circle as smooth as a dance was an imitation of that young genius Taoist's sword technique.

How long had I swung the sword like that, retracing the image of the ‘real thing’ I had seen in my past life from my hazy memories?

At some point, the memories that had been only hazy began to become clear.

“!!!”

Before my eyes, a feast of countless trajectories unfolded once again.

I danced with the sword, as if drawn by those trajectories, for a moment.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to me.

Could I see that again?

The most perfect single strike I had seen in my life.

That single strike that had cut the side of Jade Cloud Master, known as Yunnan's Greatest Sword, a master incomparable to me.

As I fully concentrated on the memory of that day, various trajectories merged into one, and only a single trajectory remained in the air.

That beautiful trajectory that had been drawn towards Jade Cloud Master's heart.

“Haat!”

With a kiai, I tried swinging the sword along that trajectory, but the trajectory my sword drew was shaky and sloppy.

But I didn't care.

I had expected that I wouldn't succeed on the first try.

My way of life was to swing the sword just one more time in the time I would have been consumed by despair.

Several dozen times I swung the sword to follow the trajectory still visible to my eyes.

As my limbs trembled and muscle aches spread throughout my body.

Without realizing it, a bright smile was hanging on my lips.

It was the first time.

That I had smiled while training. That I had felt training was enjoyable.

To me, training was just like wandering through a dark cave where not a single point of light entered.

I swung my sword tenaciously every day, but I had to suffer from anxiety every day.

Is this path I'm taking really the right one?

I had to swing my sword while asking myself countless times.

Even if I tried hard day after day, I couldn't be sure if my skills were really improving.

Going around in circles was a daily occurrence, and there were countless times when I hit a dead end and had to turn back.

But, not now.

Flick!

Because the direction I needed to go was clearly visible right in front of me.

Even though I couldn't perfectly follow the trajectory visible to my eyes.

Whoosh!

Because I was getting closer to that trajectory, albeit very slightly.

Even though there might still be thousands of steps left to the destination.

Step by step. That I was moving precisely towards that destination.

That I could confirm my own progress. I had lived without knowing how joyful this was.

Whoosh!

Ah... Was the sword, was training, such a joyful thing?